The strange situation is a procedure devised by Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s to observe attachment in children, that is relationships between a caregiver and child. It applies to children between the ages of 9 and 30 months. Broadly speaking, the attachment styles were (1) secure and (2) insecure (ambivalent and avoidance). Later, Mary Main and her husband Erik Hesse introduced the 4th category, disorganized. The procedure played an important role in the development of attachment theory.
Structured observation In the Strange Situation procedure, the child is observed playing for 21 minutes while caregivers and strangers enter and leave the room, recreating the flow of the familiar and unfamiliar presence in most children's lives. The situation varies in stressfulness and the child's responses are observed. The child experiences the following situations:
Parent and infant are introduced to the experimental room. Parent and infant are alone. The parent does not participate while the infant explores. Stranger enters, converses with the parent, then approaches infant. Parent leaves conspicuously. First separation episode: Stranger's behavior is geared to that of the infant. First reunion episode: Parent greets and comforts infant, then leaves again. Second separation episode: Infant is alone. Continuation of second separation episode: Stranger enters and gears behavior to that of the infant. Second reunion episode: Parent enters, greets infant, and picks up the infant; stranger leaves conspicuously.
Four aspects of the child's behavior are observed:
The amount of exploration (e.g. playing with new toys) the child engages in throughout. The child's reactions to the departure of its caregiver. The stranger anxiety (when the baby is alone with the stranger). The child's reunion behavior with its caregiver.
On the basis of their behaviors, the children were categorized into three groups. When interpreted by an expert with the proper training, each of these groups is said to reflect a different kind of attachment relationship with the caregiver.
Building on this foundation, Main and Solomon (1990) extended the original attachment classification to identify a fourth disorganized/disoriented attachment style. They observed infants displaying contradictory or confused behaviors when reunited with a caregiver. This complicated the understanding of attachment patterning and has informed clinical practice and developmental research.
Four patterns of attachment 1. Secure (B) A child who is securely attached to its parent will explore and play freely while the caregiver is present, using them as a "secure base" from which to explore. The child will engage with the stranger when the caregiver is present, and may be visibly upset when the caregiver departs but happy to see the caregiver on their return. The child feels confident that the caregiver is available, and will be responsive to their attachment needs and communications.
In the traditional Ainsworth et al. (1978) coding of the strange situation, secure infants are denoted as "Group B" infants and they are further subclassified as B1, B2, B3, and B4. Although these subgroupings refer to different stylistic responses to the comings and goings of the caregiver, they were not given specific labels by Ainsworth and colleagues, although their descriptive behaviours led others (including students of Ainsworth) to devise a relatively "loose" terminology for these subgroups. B1s have been referred to as "secure-reserved", B2s as "secure-inhibited", B3s as "secure-balanced", and B4s as "secure-reactive". However, in academic publications the classification of infants (if subgroups are denoted) is typically simply "B1" or "B2", although more theoretical and review-oriented papers surrounding attachment theory may use the above terminology. Secure attachment is the most common type of attachment relationship seen throughout societies.
Securely attached children are best able to explore when they have the knowledge of a secure base to return to in times of need. When assistance is given, this bolsters the sense of security and also, assuming the caregiver's assistance is helpful, educates the child in how to cope with the same problem in the future. Therefore, secure attachment can be seen as the most adaptive attachment style for learning and making use of resources in a non-threatening environment. According to attachment researchers, a child becomes securely attached when the caregiver is available and able to meet the needs of the child in a responsive and appropriate manner. Others have pointed out that there are also other determinants of the child's attachment, and that the behavior of the parent may in turn be influenced by the child's behavior.
2. Anxious-avoidant, insecure (A) A child with the anxious-avoidant insecure attachment pattern will avoid or ignore the caregiver, showing little emotion when the caregiver departs or returns. The child will not explore very much regardless of who is there. Infants classified as anxious-avoidant (A) represented a puzzle in the early 1980s. They did not exhibit distress on separation, and either ignored the caregiver on their return (A1 subtype) or showed some tendency to approach together with some tendency to ignore or turn away from the caregiver (A2 subtype). Ainsworth and Bell theorised that the apparently unruffled behaviour of the avoidant infants is in fact a mask for distress, a hypothesis later evidenced through studies of the heart rate of avoidant infants.Ainsworth, M. D. & Bell, S. M. (1970), Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41:49-67Sroufe, A. & Waters, E. (1987) Attachment as an Organizational Construct. Child Development, 48: 1184-1199
Infants are depicted as dismissive or avoidant when there is:
Ainsworth's narrative records showed that infants avoided the caregiver in the stressful Strange Situation Procedure when they had a history of experiencing rebuff of attachment behaviour. The infant's needs were frequently not met and the infant had come to believe that communication of emotional needs had no influence on the caregiver.
Ainsworth's student Mary Main theorized that avoidant behaviour in the Strange Situation Procedure should be regarded as "a conditional strategy, which paradoxically permits whatever proximity is possible under conditions of maternal rejection" by de-emphasising attachment needs.
Main proposed that avoidance has two functions for an infant whose caregiver is consistently unresponsive to their needs. Firstly, avoidant behaviour allows the infant to maintain a conditional proximity with the caregiver: close enough to maintain protection, but distant enough to avoid rebuff. Secondly, the cognitive processes organizing avoidant behaviour could help direct attention away from the unfulfilled desire for closeness with the caregiver who is avoiding a situation in which the child is overwhelmed with emotion ("disorganized distress"), and therefore unable to maintain control of themselves and achieve even conditional proximity.
3. Anxious-ambivalent/resistant, insecure (C) Children classified as Anxious-Ambivalent/Resistant (C) showed distress even before separation, and were clingy and difficult to comfort on the caregiver's return.Cassidy, Jude, and Lisa J. Berlin. "The insecure/ambivalent pattern of attachment: Theory and research." Child development 65.4 (1994): 971-991 They showed either signs of resentment in response to the absence (C1 subtype), or signs of helpless passivity (C2 subtype). Hans et al. have expressed concern that "ambivalent attachment remains the most poorly understood of Ainsworth's attachment types".Hans, S.L., Berstein, V.J., Sims, B.E. (2000) 'Change and Continuity in Ambivalent Attachment Relationships from Infancy through Adolescence' in The Organization of Attachment Relationships, ed. Patricia M. Crittenden & Angelika H. Claussen, Cambridge: CUP, pp.279 In particular, the relationship between ambivalent/resistant (C) and disorganisation (D) is still to be clarified.Mayseless, Ofra. "Maternal caregiving strategy—a distinction between the ambivalent and the disorganized profile." Infant Mental Health Journal 19.1 (1998): 20-33 However, researchers agree that the Anxious-Ambivalent/Resistant strategy is a response to unpredictably responsive caregiving, and that the displays of anger or helplessness towards the caregiver on reunion can be regarded as a conditional strategy for maintaining the availability of the caregiver by preemptively taking control of the interaction.Solomon, J., George, C. & De Jong, A. (1995) Children classified as controlling at age six: Evidence of disorganized representational strategies and aggression at home and at school. Development and Psychopathology 7: 447–447
The C1 (ambivalent resistant) subtype is coded when "resistant behavior is particularly conspicuous. The mixture of seeking and yet resisting contact and interaction has an unmistakably angry quality and indeed an angry tone may characterize behavior in the preseparation episodes".
Regarding the C2 (ambivalent passive) subtype, Ainsworth et al. wrote:
Research done by McCarthy and Taylor (1999) found that children with abusive childhood experiences were more likely to develop ambivalent attachments. The study also found that children with ambivalent attachments were more likely to experience difficulties in maintaining intimate relationships as adults.
4. Disorganized/disoriented (D)
Ainsworth herself was the first to find difficulties in fitting all infant behavior into the three classifications used in her Baltimore study. Ainsworth and colleagues sometimes observed Such observations also appeared in the doctoral theses of Ainsworth's students. Patricia Crittenden, for example, noted that one abused infant in her doctoral sample was classed as secure (B) by her undergraduate coders because her strange situation behavior was "without either avoidance or ambivalence, she did show stress-related stereotypic headcocking throughout the strange situation. This pervasive behavior, however, was the only clue to the extent of her stress."Crittenden, P.M. (1983) "Mother and Infant Patterns of Attachment" Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Virginia, May 1983, p.73
Drawing on records of behaviors discrepant with the A, B and C classifications, a fourth classification was added by Ainsworth's graduate student Mary Main. In the Strange Situation, the attachment system is expected to be activated by the departure and return of the caregiver. If the behaviour of the infant does not appear to the observer to be coordinated in a smooth way across episodes to achieve either proximity or some relative proximity with the caregiver, then it is considered "disorganised" as it indicates a disruption or flooding of the attachment system (e.g. by fear). Infant behaviours in the Strange Situation Protocol coded as disorganised/disoriented include overt displays of fear; contradictory behaviours or affects occurring simultaneously or sequentially; stereotypic, asymmetric, misdirected or jerky movements; or freezing and apparent dissociation. However, despite initial symptoms of disorganized/disoriented behaviors, Lyons-Ruth widely "recognized that 52% of disorganized infants continue to approach the caregiver, seek comfort, and cease their distress without clear ambivalent or avoidant behavior."Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Jean-Francois Bureau, M. Ann Easterbrooks, Ingrid Obsuth, Kate Hennighausen & Lauriane Vulliez-Coady (2013) Parsing the construct of maternal insensitivity: distinct longitudinal pathways associated with early maternal withdrawal, Attachment & Human Development, 15:5-6, 562-582